Set Free
by Ea Skyrah
Summary: An Elorcan AU, inspired by the Suicide Squad soundtrack.


_Set free, how I wish to be._

 **Set Free**

Lorcan stalked through the damp streets, flicking his hood over his head. Drops of thick, viscous liquid pattered in drips along the reddish orange ground, and if Lorcan didn't know better, he would have mistaken the runny fluid for saliva mixed with something darker.

The tang of rotten things and foul breedings permeated through the air. Normally, he wouldn't have opted to take the side streets, but since he'd left his warehouse later than expected, he would have to tolerate the infernal smell for now.

A slight figure shifted through the hidden emptiness.

Lorcan tensed.

"Help me." A voice whispered through the air, prickling in notches against his skin. "Set me free." The timid voice called from the fringes of the darkened shadows. A pale hand reached from the sloped roof, frail skin shed with sores and a frailness only the near death and starved could warrant.

His eyes flickered to the front, where the main road full of reddened sunlight juxtaposed the blood running through the cobblestones.

Lorcan could see his destination in front of him, the outline of bulky frame with lines of thick, silver chains and long whips dangling around him.

Raw compulsion seized through him, and it took an eon's worth of fortitude to root himself into silence, without the trace of recklessness. The burning flares shot through his veins—an order to kill his designated prey for crossing the line between the experimental phases to outright dictatorship that only power corrupted.

"Hellas, help me," the same figure moaned, and Lorcan detected the sickly smell radiating from the almost-corpse.

The name of his chosen God propelled him to bark out a question towards the deterioration of once-creation.

Not a query on how a sickly soul knew his watchful God, but one on how to end the misery no enemy deserved.

To die in battle was glory, but to fade away from a disease was a mockery of the body and health. It was the code of brotherhood between all males to end another if sick by blade so a measure of honor could be granted, even by the smallest of fractions.

A pause, and there was that scraping, raspy voice that sent him on his edge. Lorcan's eyes adjusted to the ghastly figure hanging limply, gruesome and mutilated. "Kill the mortal man that did this to us. End him for us."

The hatchet appeared in Lorcan's hand, and he cocked his head. Slowly, his senses expanded outwards, enveloping the infected area. The axe flicked up with a start, a murky uncertainty flooding Lorcan's radar.

Around the sides, the walls of the alley he'd walked through were not of bricks or mud or stones or sticks. The narrow path had been blockaded by sallow bodies, each emanating a horrid stench of pungent flumes, bones and ligaments shattered and snapped.

Lorcan swore under his breath.

"Kill the false King of Morath, and you will be set free," a voice cracked from the other side. Another live survivor, this time with both eyes carved out. Yellow, pink lines of flesh and tissue.

A little river of blood followed the crevices of the crooked stones.

"Reveal the tainted charlatan," another coughed, ribs poking out.

A little wisp of steam arose from the heated bodies on the top of the slab.

"Reveal the true queen," another grated out, nails ripped out and skin shredded with a heavy precision.

A little line of rage slithered through his body, a swift darkness fueling his strength.

"Set yourself free," the first limp figure hissed out.

Coldness descended upon him, and Lorcan's hatched dropped onto the body's neck.

The head rolled onto the stones, squelching with each turn. Clumps of green and squished, thickened grime oozed out, a slow, slow, draining process. The eyes stared up into the sky with an unfathomable quality, a question posed in memory of the past life.

Yet the undeniable look of gratefulness glazed over the sickly spheres, pointed up towards the fading sunlight.

The hisses and murmurings silenced, the walls falling into a forgone memory. The chills of the mutterings had him wrap the darkness around him as a cautious shield.

The rotten permeance filled Lorcan's nostrils, and the stench of the warm, decaying bodies wrapped around him, another set of shackles to harm and condemn.

Lorcan continued his path forward.

His mandate was by no means an ordinary take-out and escape task. By the bodies festering around the male with a knobbed crown of inked carrion and sewed flesh, the Head of Morath was by no means an easy monster.

He was a different breed.

"Please, _please_ ," a soft, feminine voice begged, Lorcan's head snapping to the sound's direction.

A beautifully ruined figure lay collapsed on the stones, chain wrapped around her neck and a thicker one on a mangled ankle. A cracked set of onyx eyes to match his own steely ones blinked battered up into the looming figure of the Lord of Morath's back.

By the crown on his greased hair, the Lord had seated himself as King.

The King looked down to the seas of red, the whip swaying within his peeled hands. At each beat of the dark-haired woman's pleas, the whip came down on her back, a cracking that had Lorcan snarling.

Lorcan watched as the mortal man reached down, the chains and whips clipped to him screeching against the ground. The dark-crowned man ran a nail along the thick, crimson liquid across the pale woman's back.

The flesh peeled apart.

The man of ruination smiled, a cruel, little smirk playing across grubby lips. No smooth edges remained, hardened and battered from time spent dallying with fear's secrets.

Lorcan seethed in his spot, cursing his orders. Eons passed, his soul slaving to a virago of a woman, the queen of Doranelle. Invisible manacles followed him as he murdered for another's bloodlust. He'd done many cruel, vicious deeds in his life, but watching a maiden scream from the hand of vices was not another one he wanted on his plate.

The mortal King screwed upon a thin vial, and poured the black contents onto the female's back.

The dark-haired female with eyes of onyx thrashed on the bleeding ground.

Lorcan tightened the grip on his hatch, his walls built from a lifetime of loneliness. As the hatchet slipped, destruction chipped away with each syllable of the maiden's soft cries and low whimpers.

He would not investigate any more. He had seen what he had needed to confirm the sins breeding in Morath.

Lorcan damned his orders.

"Are you Vernon?" he snarled, not bothering with titles, not when this mortal would have nothing when Lorcan was done with him.

The mortal slowly rose from the rivers of red running over his leather shoes. Expectancy glimmered within those equally dark eyes, of pure cunningness and loathsome atrocities.

Dark eyes met the dark soul.

An too-easy smile. "King Vernon. Of Morath."

Lorcan gazed at the male human, oozing dominance in ever twisted sense.

As his darkness warped around the human, Lorcan felt the absence of light, a darker calling, and a void of emotions satiated only driven by the bloodlust. A cursed type of pulsation, and his shadows dissipated.

"You and I, both chosen by Hellas," the King of Morath grinned. Lorcan could feel the edge towards lunacy bowing down on him as the human hammered his own dark will into him.

Without a further thought, Lorcan dismissed the power bending down on him, shattering the magic of wills. The human chuckled, the sound grating and hollow.

"Look at her," the King sneered, and Lorcan looked at the shape of a broken girl, her hair flared against the cobblestones, and flesh ripped apart for the true crooked to worm in.

He could feel the need to defend, to honor, to protect.

"We're not the same," Lorcan grounded out, taking a large step towards the King, who merely drew out a large sword wielded with curves and dips of hardened spikes. The hilt itself as one large spike, the length indented with cruel markings in long-forgotten languages.

"We've killed just as much, slave." The King sneered, brandishing the blade dripping droplets of scarlet and crimson pools. "Except you do not fully accept the darkness."

Lorcan arched his back as the King moved in an arc, driving the blade forward.

"You cannot see Annieth through her," Lorcan snarled, taking one last glance at the maiden. "And that will be your downfall."

When the King lunged again, Lorcan grabbed the blade, soaking in the pain as his the blade buried into his hands and pierced his flesh. Summoning all the strength within him, he shoved the blade forward.

His fingers snapped into a mangly flesh, but Lorcan did not waver as he drove the other end of the tipped blade through the King's heart. For a blade double-ended, a life emerged completely in darkness, meant it was easier to drive out the light.

—The charlatan revealed.

As the King's body hit the floor, the fallen mortal lashed out, hooking a crooked claw through Lorcan's chest and through his heart.

A flick upwards, and Lorcan grunted.

He jerked the nail out, and watched the edges dispel faint hues of purple.

Poison.

His own darkness did not belong in this world.

Lorcan Salvaterre watched the horror wash through the maiden's eyes, reflecting his body collapsing against the cold stones, the frail life source of time and immortality seeping through him and into the next.

The maiden's struggles had not come without vain, as her ankle, albeit deformed, was free from the chain.

She had set herself free by herself.

The darkness could see the true queen set free.

He stared into the onyx eyes, the rare beauty of concern etched across the elegant features.

He felt his breath leave him, but peace seep through him.

Lorcan took his last breath, an eternity of another dimension's darkness culminating around him.

Lorcan allowed his will to collapse under him—

—as the end greeted him.

Maeve could not imprison him through death.

And he had been set free.


End file.
